Court orders environment Canada to release mining data

Posted by Tracey P. Lauriault on Apr 27, 2009; 1:40pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Court-orders-environment-Canada-to-release-mining-data-tp1634.html

Environmentalists have been working for 16 years for these data to be released!

Federal Court ruling issued on Thursday will force Environment Canada to collect from the industry and divulge to the public the amount of toxic compounds in tailings and waste rocks found around every mine in the country.

(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090424.wmining0424/BNStory/National/?cid=al_gam_nletter_newsUp)

Also, how the data are to be released are now being discussed.  For instance civicaccess.ca is about the sharing of data for free and in an accessible way in order to render the data useful for myriad applications.  Environment Canada has a National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI).  The mining companies may choose to release but not in those formats.  Although, I do not know why they should have a choice as to how it is released, you would think it would be the choice of EnvCan! The article discusses whether or not this is a suitable place to publicly release those data:

The mining industry doesn't object in principle to revealing its pollution information, but doesn't believe the NPRI is the proper place for the disclosure, said Maggie Papoulias, spokesperson for the Mining Association of Canada. She said the trade group is reviewing the ruling.

I just went and looked up the NPRI dbase and the library did not work nor did the data search, however, the location of facilities are downloadable in an access dbase with location information and a number of services are also available for mapping - (http://www.ec.gc.ca/inrp-npri/default.asp?lang=En&n=98A4F382-1).

Now it will be up to people to go and use these data somehow.  The data being made available is just the first step, dialogue begins when good questions come up and local stakeholders can use these to inform change.
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Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault